Virtualization Technologies and Data Center Efficiency for SoftArc

This report examines the implementation of virtualization technologies within SoftArc Engineering's data center. It begins with an abstract highlighting the benefits of virtualization, such as improved performance and efficiency, and then delves into how virtualization can assist SoftArc Engineering in improving its operations. The report discusses application and server merging, hardware and software migration, multiple execution environments, reusability, and manageability. It also outlines the minimum infrastructure requirements for successful virtualization, including storage quality of service, high-speed networks, and VM-level analytics. An example organization, Amazon, is used to provide insights into virtualization technologies. The report further explores how to achieve efficiency through virtualization, considerations for implementation, and the differences between virtual servers and virtual appliances. Finally, it recommends the deployment of the Cisco ASA 5500-X Virtual Appliance firewall and provides references in APA 6th edition style.

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Abstract
Virtualization is a blistering field in the enterprise space in the current technology. This technology is
being hyped as the solution to each problem from CPU underutilization to server proliferation to
application isolation. For sure, this technology indeed has a lot of benefits with very little drawbacks to
business enterprises. This study focusses on the deployment of virtualization know-how in the data
centers to offer competent solutions for improving the performance and efficiency of the SoftArc
Engineering data center.
How virtualization assist SoftArc Engineering to improve operations
Scott describes a data center as the building block of any IT business enterprise offering the ability of a
central storehouse for storage, networking, organization and data dissemination. With the fast increase
in the size and capacity of data centers, there is nonstop growth in requests for energy use CITATION
Low16 \l 1033 (Scott, David, James, & Seth, 2016). These data centers are also riddled with IT
inadequacies since they are overwhelmed with hundreds of servers as the primary constituents. It is
noted by Bradley that most of these servers are dead and are only using energy and are not maximally
utilized. The utilization of such an environment is only a ratio of 10 to 20% CITATION Way18 \l 1033
(Bradley, 2018).
Therefore, by SoftArc Engineering adopting virtualization technology in its operations, the following are
the benefits that this company will draw from it to improve in its operations;
- Application and server merging – virtual machines would be deployed to bring down workloads
of several underutilized servers to fewer computers, possibly one machine. The benefit of this
includes cost-saving on software and hardware, administration, management and
environmental costs of the server set-up. The running of the old applications is well catered for
in virtual machines. An old application may not execute on the latest operating system or
hardware. Even though it does, it may not fully utilize the server, therefore, virtualization
consolidates these applications which are not programmed to co-exist within a single
implementation environment. The virtual machines offer isolated and secure sandboxes for
executing untrusted applications.
- Hardware and software migration – virtual machine assist system and application mobility by
making it possible for them to be migrated between virtual machines to correctly use the
resources which are existing. Huge application sets can be handled as appliances by being

packaged and executed in a VM. Furthermore, the virtualized environment can be used by
SoftArc Engineering as prodigious tools for the investigation of experiments for they offer
isolation and encapsulated running of the entire system CITATION Sam15 \l 1033 (Khan &
Zomaya, 2015).
- Multiple execution environments – virtualized environment can be deployed by SoftArc
Engineering to create execution environments that pledge resource administration by the
resource schedulers. The virtualized technology offers the impression of hardware
configurations i.e. SCSI device. Also, virtualization can be deployed to simulate networks of
autonomous computing devices. This coupled with other features, it enables the execution of
multiple operating systems in a concurrent manner having different versions.
- Reusability and manageability – virtualization technology can be deployed to retrofit innovative
features in the present operating systems deprived of overloading the system. This technology
can make tasks like system backup, relocation, and salvage easier and more controllable. It too
offers effective ways of twofold compatibility all over the software and hardware platforms to
improve controllability among several mechanisms of virtualization progression (Mike, Hersey,
& Martin, 2019).
Minimum infrastructure requirements
Having discussed the importance SoftArc Engineering will benefit from virtualization technology, there
are minimum requirements that SoftArc Engineering business enterprise has to implement so as 100%
virtualization of its data center. This is because these are mission-critical applications while continually
marching forward with the virtualization and consolidation efforts. This strategy requires solving of
issues which are related to the virtualization technology. Most importantly is having enough CPU power
which should be available to drive the applications (Andrea & Paolo, 2018). Other requirements are as
outlined below;
- Storage Quality of Service – for 100% virtualization for SoftArc Engineering to take place, SoftArc
Engineering management should ensure that the storage technology can guarantee the
performance which the applications require. The Quality of Service is the progressively common
feature. The storage systems also require to be able to set and modify QoS for each virtual
machine.
- High-speed network – because each resource will be accessed over the internet or network,
there is a need for a high-speed network to reduce latency. Three factors are considered when

it comes to the network. They are the storage switch network card and the storage adapter. The
network components for critical devices need to be upgraded to high speed, let us say at least
16Gbps or 10Gbps. Furthermore, modern networking technologies have to be deployed and
their QoS should be used in amalgamation with the storage services.
VM Level Analytics (Dinesh, 2019).
Example organization – Amazon
Amazon is a worldwide Internet-based enterprise that sells music, books, movies, toys, housewares,
electronics, and very many other products. It does this directly or through its middlemen customers.
Amazon pioneered AWS cloud computing data centers in the year 2006. This created virtualized IT
infrastructure which allows its customers to securely build and innovate products in a faster manner.
Amazon has continued to innovate and design systems of its data centers protecting it from natural and
man-made natural risks. Furthermore, Amazon has implemented controls with build automated systems
with third-party audits which ensures compliance and security of customers (AWS, 2020).
Amazon organization virtualization technologies are relevant to SoftArc Engineering organization, in the
manner that SoftArc Engineering can take a section of Amazon virtualized technologies and perform
benchmarking. The benchmarking exercise will give SoftArc Engineering a better and wider overview of
an ideal virtualized data center. This can be replicated by SoftArc Engineering to build its data center.
How to achieve efficiency
The requirement for computing power has been continuously been bulging. The rise in energy expenses
for data centers has made the data center virtualization and consolidation of the best exploration areas.
It is an agreeable note the virtualized server environment has efficiency in performance as compared to
a hardware server.
Since the rollover or virtualized technology, there has been improved efficiency in the data center server
farm. Furthermore, data center virtualization has also led to shrinkage of organizational infrastructure.
This is achieved through consolidation. Besides, this technology has slashed the bloated power bills and
reduced the tedious administrative tasks (Kunal & Stankowic, 2015)
In general terms, server virtualization technology improves the efficacy and performance of the data
center farm.

Considerations
The choice of virtualization technology which is most applicable for the server virtualization varies from
one environment to another. Below are the considerations which have to be in mind during the
virtualization of SoftArc Engineering data center;
- Performance – this is one of the most important metrics to be considered during decision
making in a virtualized environment. The performance requirement will affect the type of
hardware equipment to be used.
- Redundancy – redundancy determines the availability of a system. This is to say, whenever, a
system goes down there must be another system that will be used as the failover. Some
virtualization platforms have the capability of supporting this feature. Therefore; this feature
ought to be considered during the virtualization implementation phase.
- Operations – there exists some operational issues which influence the virtualization rollout.
Windows hardware maintenance, change control, software upgrades are to be put into
consideration.
- Security – the best way to improve the performance of the virtualized environment is by moving
the virtual machine from one host computer to another where their hardware resources.
- Evolution – a question asked by most individuals is whether the virtualization to be adopted
within a given organization.
Differences between a virtual server and a virtual appliance to the Board
Whereas a virtual appliance denotes the virtual machine which already preconfigured image file which
consists of an operating system environment and it is a single application, virtual server machine in an
environment which is not yet configured and can be configured with one or operating systems to
perform a given task.
The virtual appliance resolves to streamline the delivery and operation of a specific application. A virtual
server, on the other hand, is not too tied to the execution of a particular application.
The virtual appliance is deployed as a subset of a virtual machine or a virtual machine by itself. A virtual
server, on the other hand, operates in a hardware environment. In summary, an appliance can be
described as a preconfigured virtual machine (Garrison & Nova, 2017).
YES. It is recommendable for SoftArc Engineering to deploy the Cisco ASA 5500-X Virtual Appliance
firewall. Deployment of such technology is encouraged because it does not require any expertise in

deployment. For instance, what is required is to provide the necessary environment for the appliance
and bam, the device is ready to be used. Another advantage is that the preconfigured appliance is ready
for deployment and does not waste a lot of time waiting for configuration. However, the pre-configured
appliance does not give room to the organizational experts to perform customization on the device
(Omar, Panos, & Aaron, 2016).

References
Andrea, M., & Paolo, V. (2018). Data Center Virtualization Certification: VCP6.5-DCV Exam Guide.
Birmingham: Packt Publishing Ltd.
AWS. (2020, April 16). Our Data Centers. Retrieved from AWS:
https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-center/data-centers/
Bradley, W. C. (2018). Handbook of Data Center Management (2nd ed.). Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Dinesh, D. (2019). Cloud Native Data Center Networking (1st ed.). Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Garrison, J., & Nova, . (2017). Cloud Native Infrastructure: Patterns for Scalable Infrastructure.
Champaign: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Khan, S. U., & Zomaya, . Y. (2015). Handbook on Data Centers. New York City: Springer.
Kunal, K., & Stankowic, C. (2015). VMware vSphere Essentials. Birmingham: Packt Publishing Ltd.
Mike, B., Hersey, C., & Martin, G. (2019). The Complete VMware vSphere Guide. Birmingham: Packt
Publishing Ltd.
Omar, S., Panos, K., & Aaron, W. (2016). Cisco Next-Generation Security Solutions. New York City:
Pearson Education.
Scott, L., David, D., James, G., & Seth, K. (2016). Building a Modern Data Center: Principles and Strategies
of Design. Hoboken: ActualTech Media.